What Scales to Use over a Blues (not just Blues Scales)

by Ari • 31 May 2017 — 1 minute read

What to use – over a blues – when you are tired of blues scales…

I got a question in about scales to use for soloing over a blues but not just using blues scales. I could not help but add a bit of a caveat; because sometimes thinking only about what notes to use can land us forgetting about the story the blues tends to tell. That said, there are some great scales one can use over the blues and especially Robben Ford’s dim-dom scale lends a great colorful sound to the blues.

What scales do you use over the blues?

How do you think about the blues?

Who are your favorite blues artists?

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Read Ariane Cap ‘s answer to What other scales can you use to improvise Blues? on Quora

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Hi. I'm Ari.

As a bassist, I have toured/played/recorded with a variety of rock, Jazz, and funk bands, I have worked with some incredible producers (Keith Olsen) and musicians (Paul Hanson, Muriel Anderson) and I toured Brazil with Stu Hamm as a duo.

As a bass teacher, I have taught at London Bass Day, Gerald Veasley’s Bass Boot Camp, SBL, Truefire, notreble… I even ran my own music school for a few years before gigs took me back on the road.

One thing to know about me is that I teach because I am absolutely fascinated with the learning process. And I am obsessed with helping others realize their musical potential.

When I started playing bass, I excelled very quickly because I had an amazing teacher who taught me using a powerful method. This method transformed my playing so quickly that I passed a bunch of high-level university auditions and even tested out of entire classes at university even though I had been playing for only a very short time.

That’s what, many years later turned into one of my books, co-written with Wolf Wein, called “The Pattern System for the Bass Player”. I created entire systems of learning based on some of these ideas and wrote books and created courses together with Wolf. Our bass books have sold over 30,000 copies and garnered rave reviews.

I started teaching online in 2009 and have embraced technology as a powerful learning tool since then, never losing sight of the importance of providing feedback and personalized guidance to learners.

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What Scales to Use over a Blues (not just Blues Scales)